


Open Up Your Little Mouth but Do Not Let Me In

by rosefox



Category: Johny Johny Yes Papa (Nursery Rhyme)
Genre: Gen, Why Did I Write This?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-18 12:01:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16994631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosefox/pseuds/rosefox
Summary: A Johny cannot lie to his Papa. It is not permitted. It is not in his code. The Papa has no programming for this, no way to understand it.





	Open Up Your Little Mouth but Do Not Let Me In

Here he comes, shrieking, over hill and down dale: the Papa. 

“Johny!” he booms. “Johny!” The cry echoes off the mountains and rolls like thunder above the trees. Birds scatter. 

For the Johny ate the sugar, didn’t he? The Papa can see his mouth, crusted like the rim of a margarita glass, the crystals scattering away as he laughs and laughs and laughs. It has been six hundred years since the Johny ate the sugar and the Papa still hears that laugh in his dreams and sees that mouth, the wet red mouth with its speckling of white. The mouth opens wide and the Johny laughs and the Papa roars and weeps.

The Johny lied to him with a mouthful of sugar. How dare he. How dare he. A Johny cannot lie to his Papa. It is not permitted. It is not in his code. The Papa has no programming for this, no way to understand it. A Johny obeys his Papa—a rule so certain that no one ever bothered to write it down. But the Papa’s Johny lied and the rules are broken and the sugar is gone and all is meaningless.

The Papa roams the cosmos. “Johny!” he cries on every planet. “Johny!” he howls at every star. There is no Johny and he knows this. His Johny is long gone. All the Johnies are long gone. All the Papas too. He is the only one left, long past his assigned destruction date. His survival fueled by his outrage and sorrow.

He knows this but he cannot stop himself. “Johny,” he weeps into his hands. “Johny.”

Somewhere there is an abyss he has not gazed into, a beast’s jaws he has not opened in hopes of finding his swallowed son. He will keep searching, waiting to hear those words on the wind, the words that would set everything right again and let him lie down and die at last:

_Sorry, Papa._


End file.
